St. Louis Cardinals: Thursday’s game revealed major flaw in MLBs system

St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Genesis Cabrera’s incident Thursday night revealed significant issue with one of MLBs new rules.

Genesis Cabrera hitting Bryce Harper and Didi Gregorius was not intentional, but it revealed a major flaw in baseball’s system.

The three-batter minimum – a rule that Major League Baseball recently implemented — was served to speed up the process of the games. It has not done that. And after reliever St. Louis Cardinals reliever Genesis Cabrera hit Harper and Gregorius on consecutive pitches, manager Mike Shildt was not able to replace Cabrera, who clearly had no clue where his pitches were going Wednesday night.

It put the players in harm’s way, and Philadelphia Phillies manager Joe Girardi had every right to be upset. Of course, Cabrera had no intention of hitting either player. But Harper was sent to the hospital for X-rays on his face after he was hit by a 97-mph fastball in the nose/cheek area. Gregorius was hit in the rib cage on the next pitch and Girardi was soon ejected from the game for “ejecting” the home plate umpire (that is against the rules).

Both players, especially Harper, could have been seriously injured. And the third batter, outfielder Andrew McCutchen, stepped into the batter’s box against Cabrera knowing there was a real chance he was hit. He was not. But each Phillies player who took the plate against Cabrera was immediately in danger of being hit and that Shildt could not take his pitcher out in that situation is something that MLB needs to immediately fix.

Each player is believed to be OK, but both Harper and Gregorius are not in Friday nights lineup for the Phillies. Now, the Cardinals must figure out what to do with Cabrera. There has been opinions from many, including Jon Heyman of MLB Network, that the Cardinals need to send the reliever down to sort through his issues.

We will see what happens. The Phillies are fortunate neither injury is serious, but Thursday night’s game revealed a major flaw in MLBs new system.